Going through last year’s Spring Break Short Story Recommendations, I came across the first one of 2021, a delicious little tale of Caribbean horror, Henry S. Whitehead‘s “Black Tancrède.”
It’s a weird little story, but a fun one. I won’t prattle on too long—here’s me one year ago in “Spring Break Short Story Recommendations 2021, Part I: ‘Black Tancrède’“:
Today’s Spring Break Short Story Recommendation 2022 comes from a very old, very tattered collection of short stories I purchased probably twenty or more years ago. I think I picked it up on a trip with my grandparents when I was somewhere between the ages of ten and thirteen, the amorphous “tween” years.
The collection is called, simply, Short Story Masterpieces, and boasts Robert Penn Warren as one of its editors (the other being Albert Erskine). I have a vague recollection of attempting to read some of the stories in our hotel room the night that I bought it, and realized that these stories were way over my head at that time. I could read the words, but I could not comprehend them, at least not fully.
However, one story that always stuck out to me was John Collier‘s “Witch’s Money.” I probably flipped to that story because it had “witch” in the title, and even back then ghost stories and the like fascinated me. The story—which was published in The New Yorker in 1939—has little to do with hags and haunts, but instead explores a fatal misunderstanding about the nature of “cheques” (or “checks” to my fellow American readers).
As is my custom, I dedicate a few days each Spring Break to recommending and reviewing various short stories. Typically, I read through an anthology of short stories over break and highlight three or four of the best stories from them.
However, I neglected to take an anthology with me when I left town for Easter weekend, and I didn’t have the time to pluck one from my parents’ substantial library. So, I’m doing a one-off today (and possibly for other Spring Break Shorty Story Recommendation 2022 installments this week), although I am sure this story has appeared in many anthologies.
The story is E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops,” which I wrote about in brief in another post in April 2020, during the early days of The Age of The Virus. The Z Man wrote about it in one of his posts from the time, which intrigued me enough to read the story.
It is, I believe, one of the great works of prophetic science fiction. There’s a great deal of that from the mid-twentieth century; Forster was predicting things like FaceTime and social media in 1909.
My good friend and former colleague H.L. Liptak has another published story out, this one at Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine. The story is called “That Rains May Come,” and is a moving fairy tale about a young woman, Elizabeta, struggling to sustain her mother, her farm, and her pigs during a brutal, unrelenting drought.
Regular readers know I love short stories, and dedicate an entire week in April to reviewing them. I love them even more when my friends write them—and receive rewards for doing so!
My former colleague and current friend Helen Liptak has done just that, taking runner-up in a recent short story contest for Funny Pearls, a British humo(u)r website dedicated to publishing women writers. She won the prize (and, as she told me, some pounds) for her story “Just Another Slow Day at the Diner.”
Another month has passed, meaning I have three more editions of Supporting Friends Friday to bring back to your attention. Coming on the heels of yet another Bandcamp Friday sales pitch, it only seems fitting to go in the other direction and highlight friends, rather than my self-indulgent work.
So, without further ado, here are some writers you should check out:
Well, that’s it for another Lazy Sunday. Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
One of the joys of teaching in a private school setting is the opportunity to work with teachers from many backgrounds, and with many talents. For several years I had the pleasure of working with the subject of today’s Supporting Friends Friday, who has just published a short work of fiction under the name Helen Liptak.
Well, it was inevitable—after dedicating an extremely popular edition of Supporting Friends Friday to the irreplaceable Audre Myers, I had to dedicate one to the man and the website that gave her an outlet: Neo and Nebraska Energy Observer.
I’m not sure how I discovered Nebraska Energy Observer, but I suspect it involved Neo leaving a comment on one of my posts a couple of years ago. I’m generally suspicious of unknown commenters, as the Internet is full of trolls interested in harassing right-wing bloggers, but I quickly figured out that Neo was one of the good guys.
My initial perception was that Neo was obsessed with English history, and I figured his blog was largely dedicated to the “special relationship” between the United States and our erstwhile mother country. That relationship is, indeed, an important focus of Nebraska Energy Observer (though you’d never guess it from the title), but the blog covers a wide range of topics (including, of course, reflections on the life of an electrical lineman in Nebraska).
I’ve been enjoying my Shudder membership immensely, and it’s pretty much become the main streaming service I watch when I’m viewing solo. Needless to say, I’ve consumed a lot of movies on the service already, so brace yourselves for many horror movie reviews (as if I didn’t mostly write those already).
This week, I’m looking at the horror anthology Creepshow (1982). Horror anthologies can vary in quality, with usually one very strong entry, and then some forgettable duds. Creepshow, for the most part, beats the odds.
I don’t remember when I first saw Creepshow, but I was probably far too young. What I do know is that some of its most iconic, comic-book-inspired images have stuck with me down to the present. I didn’t even know they were from Creepshow until re-watching it all these years later, but they’ve been seared into my brain.
For example, the whole plot of “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill“—which stars Stephen King in his first film role—has always stuck with me (indeed, I have an idea for a short story with a similar premise tentatively entitled “Yeast Man”): the idiot farmer slowly succumbing to the weird alien plant. Ted Danson’s submerged head in “Something to Tide You Over” is another memorable image, as is the flood of roaches entering the impossibly sanitized apartment in “They’re Creeping Up on You!”
My blogger buddy photog over at Orion’s Cold Fire I are both publishing our reviews of The Color Out of Space simultaneously. You can read his screed against this cinematic butchering of the Lovecraft story here: https://orionscoldfire.com/index.php/2021/06/14/color-out-of-space-2019-a-science-fiction-and-fantasy-movie-review/
A few weeks ago, my blogger buddy photog over at Orion’s Cold Fire wrote a brief blog post comparing Nicolas Cage to William Shatner. In it, he announced that Nicolas Cage starred in an adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story, “The Colour Out of Space.”
Naturally, I immediately went to RedBox and (with a coupon code, of course) and rented The Color Out of Space on-demand. As a fan of Lovecraft’s weird tales and Nicolas Cage’s weird acting, I had to see this film.
The Portly Politico 